TCU’s first-year guards finding their stride in Big 12 rematches

Back in the early stretch of the Big 12 men’s basketball season, TCU coach Jamie Dixon reflected on one of the most daunting challenges the Horned Frogs (17-7, 6-5 in Big 12) figured to face in league play.

Dixon cited growing pains in a TCU backcourt manned by a pair of newcomers to the program: freshman Jaylen Fisher, the primary point guard, and sophomore Alex Robinson, a Texas A&M transfer and Mansfield Timberview graduate. He also predicted that the Frogs’ young guards would fare better in their second matchups against league opponents than their first as the team went through its double round-robin schedule.

TCU heads into Saturday’s game at No. 6 Baylor (21-3, 8-3) with a three-game winning streak, its longest in five seasons as a Big 12 member. Two of the victories have come in rematches, with the Frogs and their young guards holding a 2-0 mark in their second meetings of the season against league opponents: a 78-63 victory over Texas, when Robinson scored 17 points and added eight assists, plus a 62-61 triumph over Texas Tech that included a career-high 17 points from Fisher. Robinson capped the Tech triumph with a game-winning free throw with 1.4 seconds remaining and ranks second among Big 12 players in assists (5.5 per game).

“We’ve thrown a freshman and a sophomore into the fire in a league that some people would say has the best guards in the country,” Dixon said, citing Kansas’ Frank Mason and Baylor’s Manu Lecomte as examples. “You’re not going to win every battle. You’re seeing Jaylen get through a tough stretch and responding. Where we’ve really addressed it is if you play good defense, the other things will happen.”

Fisher, who leads the Frogs in made 3-pointers (35), agreed with Dixon’s assessment that things would improve in his second time through the league.

“Yeah, I think that’s happening,” Fisher said. “It’s a matter of watching film, correcting your mistakes, coming here and correcting them again in practice so they don’t happen in a game.”

This story was originally published February 9, 2017 at 6:21 PM with the headline "TCU’s first-year guards finding their stride in Big 12 rematches."